FREJUS, France, Feb 20 (AFP)  More than 900 Kurdish immigrants who were
 shipwrecked on the French Riviera are to be given papers allowing them to leave their holding
 camp and request political asylum, the French interior ministry announced Tuesday.

 The ministry said that after interviewing the 430 adults among the refugees their requests to be
 allowed to stay in Europe were found to be "not manifestly without basis under current law."

 The Kurds claim to have been persecuted in Iraq. They paid thousands of dollars to traffickers to
 be transported to Europe aboard the freighter East Sea, which was deliberately driven onto
 rocks Saturday off the French coast.

 Phillipe Schaeffer, the deputy governor of the Var region where the Kurds were being held, said
 officials would work through Tuesday night to distribute papers giving the Kurds temporary
 permission to enter French territory.

 The immigrants will now have eight days to apply for political asylum.

 The military camp at Frejus where they were housed after being abandoned on the grounded
 cargo ship has been declared "extra territorial".

 Schaeffer said that the interior ministry's decision concerned 911 migrants. Previous figures
 given by officials and the Red Cross for the total number of Kurds had varied between 908 and
 912.

 There was some speculation that the Kurds, who police say were surprised to arrive in France,
 will attempt to make their own way to other European countries with more flexible asylum laws.

 Currently, French judges reject more than three-quarters of asylum applications and France is
 not a favoured destination for migrants or the smuggling gangs who bring them to the European
 Union's coasts and borders. Britain and Germany are often cited by would-be illegal immigrants
 as preferred final destinations.

 Following the French interior ministry's decision, the Kurds will no longer be required to attend a
 mammoth court session in Draguignan on Wednesday, where each refugee's case was to be
 heard individually.

 The court was to have ruled on the Kurds' continuing detention in Frejus, which had been
 branded illegal by some human rights organisations.

 Danielle Mitterrand, the wife of the late French president and head of the human rights
 organisation France Libertes, spent two and a half hours with the Kurds on Tuesday, and left
 demanding they be released and allowed to stay in France.

 She also said it was impossible for the Draguignan judges to make realistic decisions on a
 case-by-case basis based on interviews conducted over only three days.

 Earlier she told the daily France Soir: "In any case, it is out of the question to send them back
 to their country. Our duty is to grant them political asylum."

 If the refugees make an application for political asylum within the eight days they will be
 permitted to stay in France while the case is heard.

 The East Sea was driven onto rocks off the French coast by its crew, who were part of what
 border police described as a joint Iraqi and Turkish mafia gang. The refugees had been trapped
 in the hold for seven days and came ashore dehydrated and confused.

 Since then, the increasingly restless migrants have been held in the military depot which has
 been declared an extra-territorial "waiting area" by the French authorities. On Tuesday, several
 hundred of them held a sit-down protest to demand their cases be speeded up.

 The Draguignan judges have opened a criminal investigation into the grounding of the East Sea,
 and its crew are being sought by police to face charges of "endangering human life" and "aiding
 illegal immigration."

 Police now believe that the crew used some kind of powerboat to abandon the freighter before
 the ship hit rocks 25 miles (40 kilometres) west of Cannes, launching one of the East Sea's
 lifeboats to mislead investigators, according to local press reports.
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The Kurdistan Observer
www.kurdistanobserver.com